Arknights, but the Family Has Fallen into Decline Again, Again, Again

Low-salt delicacy, certified as a rich, steaming brew.

"This is a little too much for me."

Blaze took it for granted. "There's also Specter's and my share! We've been on duty for so long, we're getting hungry too!"

Right!

Specter!

Where had she gone!?

Following the mental link, Oute was surprised to find that Specter really was still on duty downstairs.

If Specter regarded that duty roster as an extension of my combat orders, then this wasn't impossible...

And that meant her ability to think was recovering!

Essentially, the nun personality had been a self-protective persona Laurentina developed in response to the Church of the Deep's inhumane human experiments!

But that persona itself was severely incomplete. It retained only some of Laurentina's combat instincts as an Abyssal Hunter, while also suffering under the Church of the Deep's doctrines...

Oute pondered.

In fact, according to the files, during Laurentina's early days at Rhodes Island, Specter's nun persona had been unstable. From time to time, she showed intense hostility toward her nun's habit and tried to tear it apart.

But as the "palliative therapy" progressed, Laurentina gradually accepted the fact that she coexisted with the liquefied Originium in her spinal cord, and Specter's nun persona became increasingly stable.

Therefore, there were two possibilities for Specter's current behavior... One was that Laurentina, the Abyssal Hunter, was gradually awakening. The other was that the nun persona had stabilized further, perhaps even forming a complete individual.

Considering how long Specter had been receiving treatment, and that Laurentina had only begun awakening more than a year later in the original timeline, Oute considered the second possibility more reliable.

His eyes flickered as he said, "In that case, go call Specter up first."

"Don't tell her I asked her to come up," Oute added.

Blaze did not understand why, but she readily agreed with her usual energy. "Leave it to me!"

Following her brisk yet tiptoeing "cat turn," Specter really did return upstairs shortly afterward.

"..." The nun silently returned to Oute's side.

After eating a serving of fish balls and taking several sips of milk tea that still bore traces of Blaze's Originium Arts, Oute felt considerably more energized.

Before Oute could make a move, PRTS seemed to foresee it and immediately warned him, "Doc Otter, the abundant energy you currently feel is merely an illusion created by your brain."

"These foods are still being digested. Please do not move around carelessly."

Oute rolled his eyes. Am I really that ungrateful?

This man had just insisted that he was not a workaholic, only to obsess over necromancy, overwork his brain, and give himself hypoglycemia...

He really was rather ungrateful in many ways.

Oute stretched and said to Blaze, "You two should eat too."

And just as Oute expected, Blaze had completely forgotten that one of her primary duties was protecting Oute from a rampaging Specter.

She called out to Specter, "Specter, come eat too! A lot of Lungmen's food takes outsiders' tastes into account!"

Oute hurriedly stopped this Victoria cat from promoting the vinegar-and-salt-flavored rice noodle rolls she had specifically bought.

Yes, the miraculous vinegar-and-salt rice noodle rolls had already been swiftly wiped out by the big cat.

Nodding Is Yes, Shaking Your Head Is!

A lonely crescent moon, frenzied believers, moving dry bones, enormous worms, a twisted evil god, and those two riddle-speakers who refused to speak like normal people...

The Sarkaz girl opened her eyes blankly as the noisy dream receded from her.

Oute was still copying down those necromancies through the PRTS terminal. Naturally, no one was there to drag her past the end of the dream and into Hamlet.

It took her quite a while to recover before she asked, "What time is it?"

Hedley glanced at the battle-damaged clock beside the desk and answered while tidying up, "A little past ten at night."

"...Seriously? Why do I still feel so tired?"

W actually knew the answer.

Right now, her body was bearing the burden of two souls at once.

"After having your body occupied by a mind flayer, you should be grateful that you woke up still being yourself. Oute has become indecisive," Hedley declared with inexplicable confidence.

"A mind flayer!? Oute is a mind flayer!?" W shot upright.

"I don't really know, but do mind flayers actually exist among the Sarkaz? Aren't they just stories meant to scare children?" Ines asked, resting her chin on her hand.

"In Sarkaz legends, most characters have real-life counterparts," Hedley said. "Besides, if he isn't a mind flayer, how else do you explain all this?"

"Extreme intelligence and indifference, a lack of empathy, yet deeply involved in the civil war! Not to mention the most obvious evidence: he possessed you!"

"What? So you were just guessing?" W deflated somewhat, lay back down, and casually said, "What nonsense. That's his Originium Arts."

"Don't lie down! Someone on Talulah's side is looking for us! Now that you're awake, I don't have to go!"

W waved a hand and sneered. "At most, they want to meet the new boss of the Sarkaz. What tricks could they possibly pull?"

Ines said, "You really did miss quite a lot while you were asleep."

"What? Are Talulah and the others planning to play bumper cars? Ram Chernobog into Lungmen?"

"..."

"..."

The strange silence made W sit up again. In disbelief, she said, "Answer me! That shameless snake isn't actually going to do that, is she?"

This was a mille-feuille of misunderstandings: because Oute had speedrun Chernobog, "Talulah" had, to a certain degree, lost her aura of strength.

Thus, to advance his plan, the Black Snake told the officers that "this is a deception operation." And since it was a "deception operation," word could not leak out, or it would surely fail.

As a result, the ordinary members received the message from their officers that "Chernobog really is going to ram into Lungmen."

However... the Black Snake really was going to ram it in.

Because W was exhausted for various reasons and absent as the new leader of the Sarkaz, the Black Snake would not send anyone to tell these Sarkaz, whose organization had already become chaotic, the "truth," even if only for appearances' sake.

Hedley analyzed, "At first glance, it seems like a terrible move. But with Chernobog already seven-tenths or eight-tenths destroyed by the Catastrophe, Reunion Movement doesn't actually have many strategic options."

"If they organize an attack on Lungmen and try to plunder it, victory would naturally be good. Even if they fail, they would merely lose a batch of rabble."

That was how bandits operated.

But the current Reunion Movement really was nothing more than a bandit force. Under the Black Snake's manipulation, they had seized Chernobog, but precisely because of that, Chernobog now had to face a concealed Catastrophe.

"Such a cold-blooded plan..." Hedley shook his head. "We've actually seen plenty of them."

It was just that the Talulah of the past was not someone who would do such a thing.

W sighed. "If Oute wasn't wrong..."

She shook her head, her expression darkening. "How could that bastard ever be wrong?"

"Fuck." After spitting the word out, the Sarkaz girl climbed down from the bed, stretched her body, and said, "The current Talulah isn't herself."

W frowned. "It's somewhat like what Oute did to me—there's an old thing in her head too."

"Her adoptive father and the enemy who killed her father, Koschei."

W tapped her head, then remembered something else. "By the way, she has another enemy who killed her father—the Wei guy from Lungmen."

"What?" Ines widened her eyes. Like Wei Yenwu, she reached the same conclusion. "She made such a huge mess just for revenge!?"

"You've got the wrong focus! We still don't know who came up with this idiotic plan!"

W repeatedly checked the Originium explosives on her body, preparing to leave.

Before going, she turned back to Ines and said, "Whether she wants revenge or not, the person beneath that pretty face isn't her anymore."

Deliberately or otherwise, W concealed another matter concerning Oute once again: necromancy.

Most Sarkaz revered the peace of souls after death... and Terra's so-called Soul-Soothing Festival had originated from that Sarkaz belief.

Did she not want the two of them to worry?

Or was she... subconsciously "protecting" Oute?

Now that she alone had to bear Alina's soul, W felt a fatigue that no amount of rest could relieve.

She had clearly just gotten out of bed, yet it felt as though there was a black hole inside her, constantly devouring her strength and energy.

Damn it... why did I agree to him back then?

At that moment, Oute had also just finished his late-night meal.

By his calculations, W had probably awakened by now.

As an "Atlantean," Specter's pursuit of food had not been utterly ruined by a terrible commoner's diet like that of Blaze, the "Briton."

Incidentally, even in her current withdrawn state, she kept a respectful distance from the vinegar-and-salt fish balls, rice noodle rolls, and rice noodles that were a thousand times more outrageous than "General Tso's chicken."

Oute thought deeply: From this perspective, was Blaze subconsciously using her Victoria tastes to declare sovereignty over more than half of the late-night meal?

Wow, the big cat truly was a born predator, with such deep scheming!

This child could not be allowed to remain!

Oute checked the time: 10:21 p.m.

It was about time... time to find the white rabbit and speak in riddles.

Oute was not sure whether he could seize FrostNova through such a great distance and such a faint karmic connection, dragging her into Hamlet to accompany him in grinding dungeons and serving time.

So he decided to dig deep into Terra's glorious tradition of riddle-speakers and make an appearance with a cryptic remark.

Watching Specter chew slowly and Blaze devour her food in great mouthfuls, Oute wiped his mouth and asked through the mental link whether he could take control.

As long as W refused, Oute would have to break through her mental defenses to forcibly take over.

W gritted her teeth and forcefully shook her head at the air.